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Topic: Nagoya NA-771 antenna for Baofeng HT (Read 22307 times)

Wally, Does this mean performance would be even poorer if the HT were used with an external mike/speaker, with no body contact to the HT?

Nice catch - yes it does, unless you use a reasonable substitute. Setting the HT on the metal roof of a vehicle and using an external speaker/mic can improve performance. The metal roof acts as a ground plane, like with a mag-mount antenna.

If I were using a mag-mount antenna on the roof of a vehicle, I wouldn't bother with a rat-tail. In that case you have removed the rubber ducky from the radio and connected a coax cable however long that leads to the mag-mount antenna. You want the counterpoise (the missing half of a dipole) to be at the junction of the feed line (coax) and the antenna. The metal roof serves as the counterpoise to the vertical whip of the mag-mount. Ditto if you place a mag-mount on top of your refrigerator, metal cookie baking sheet, file cabinet or whatever.

I bought a Nagoya brand NA-771 HT antenna from eBay for $7, and I'm really impressed with it. It's a flexible whip, about 15" long. I figured it would be better than the stock antenna on my little Baofeng UV-5RA, but it is REALLY better. In fact, I can now hit repeaters with the Baofeng that I can't hit with my Yaesu VX-7R. It even picks up broadcast FM pretty well, whereas the stock antenna was pretty much useless for this. If you have one of the little Chinese HT's, spend the money and pick one of these up, they're worth every penny.